AT&T Will Provide 3G for Vita, Sony’s Pricey New Portable Game Machine

LOS ANGELES — Sony unveiled the final name and pricing — but not a launch window — for its next-generation portable game system Monday at its E3 2011 press conference. Officially called PlayStation Vita, the handheld formerly code-named the NGP will cost $300, or $250 for a version without 3G connectivity.

[eventbug] Sony announced — to audible groans from the packed stadium crowd here — that it had chosen AT&T as its exclusive service provider for the system’s 3G data plan. It did not say how much the service would cost.

Sony briefly addressed the continued partial outage of the PlayStation Network following a massive security breach in April. The company made no further announcements about increased security, and simply apologized to consumers for the length of the down time. It said the network is 90 percent online at this time.

Sony did not talk at all about any new home game machine, as expected. Instead, the company shored up the lineup for its PlayStation 3, announcing that the highly anticipated BioShock Infinite would feature support for the Move motion controller, as would many other games.

Wired.com’s live-blog coverage of the event follows:

4:52 p.m. — We’re in the venue. The Wi-Fi seems to be working not very well and this place is kind of a cellular dead zone, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed I’ll be able to live blog effectively throughout the whole show.

4:57 p.m. — I’m right that E3 has been pretty disappointing so far, right? Lots of deeper dives on games we already knew about, tons and tons of shooters, and no surprising big announcements. It would be great if Sony would come out and change all that with some shocking PlayStation news. But no pressure or anything.

5:05 p.m. — This event is getting started on Sony time, which is somewhere between 10 and 30 minutes behind the rest of us.

5:10 p.m. — Oh, did I mention we all got pairs of 3-D glasses as we came into the venue? This is gonna be like watching one of them newfangled movies they have now.

5:12 — They want us to put the glasses on now. Show begins in two minutes, they say. “They” is the disembodied voice of a woman. Not GlaDOS.

5:16 — Hey, it started! My seat is rumbling because the sound is so loud. Oh, there’s a 3-D video of the PlayStation family of products. Sizzle reel of games kicks into high gear. Uncharted, God of War, Mortal Kombat, Green Lantern. Was that all NGP? They’re not saying specifically. No, here’s some NGP games: Little Big Planet, Hot Shots, Little Deviants, etc. PlayStation Move games. Looks like Sony’s doing a dance game. And Carnival Games. And now they’re showing Captain America, Sonic … tons and tons of quick snippets of games.

5:19 — Sizzle reel keeps game snippets coming. There was definitely an early-looking God of War game shoved in there — maybe NGP? It looked a little rough, unfinished from the two seconds of footage. But anyway, the video’s over now!

5:20 — “What a crowd,” says Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton. Well, you did invite them. Lots and lots of applause at this show from the audience, more so than other conferences. Lots of Sony members and their partners in the house?

“To our esteemed members of the press, I say: ‘You’re welcome,'” says Tretton about the PlayStation Network outage, implying that journalists were happy to cover the bad news. Big laugh. Tretton addresses consumers: “I want to apologize both personally and on behalf of the company for any anxiety we have caused you.”

5:24 — “Virtually anything” Sony talks about today will be playable immediately following the conference, Tretton says, segueing straight from the apology about PlayStation Network directly into selling today’s games. “Recent studies show that PlayStation 3 is the leading device for streaming Netflix,” he says. Interesting. Announces partnership with CinemaNow content.

5:26 — To show us the latest stuff from Naughty Dog, here’s … Naughty Dog. They’re going to show us Uncharted 3.

5:28 — Uncharted 3 demo continues to play. Nathan Drake is being all stealthy and killing guys. Now he is being totally not stealthy but still killing guys.

5:31 — OK, this is honestly impressive stuff. The (oil tanker?) that Drake is on tips over, flooding with water and sending him and several cars spilling into it, and he just keeps on going. The things that happen are very cinematic, surprising stuff. This is fun to watch.

5:33 — Multiplayer beta begins June 28. Working with Subway restaurants — you’ll be able to go to Subway and get early access to the entire competitive part of the game before it hits stores in November. Now they want us to put on our glasses again and watch another movie of this game! It’ll be out Nov. 1, 2011.

5:36 — “We are going to sell a few copies of that,” says Tretton. Now it’s time for Insomniac Games. They’ll be showing off Resistance 3, which as you may have heard is a shooter.

5:41 — Sony will be bundling Resistance 3 with the Sharpshooter and PlayStation Move (and a Navigation Controller and a PS Eye camera) for $150, in case you want to play it with the full motion-control setup.

5:41 — God of War Origins Collection for PS3 is a remastered version of the PSP God of War games. Both this and the previously announced Ico/Shadow of the Colossus remaster edition for PS3 will be available in September. Well, that explains why that God of War footage they showed looked a little janky, anyway.

“We’re going to break the mold on pricing for 3-D this year,” Tretton says. Two new 3-D hardware products available in PlayStation family, he says. A PlayStation-branded 24-inch 3-D display — perfect for dorm rooms and bedrooms. Allows two people playing a game to see individual, unique full-screen images rather than a split-screen image.

5:45 — The PlayStation monitor package, which includes the TV, a pair of glasses, HDMI cable and Resistance 3 will be available this fall for $500. Additional glasses will cost $70. Trying to drive 3-D adoption.

5:47 — 2K Sports is here to talk up NBA 2K11, which sold incredibly well last year, in great part because Electronic Arts screwed up its basketball game and had to cancel the title. They’re showing how the new game will work with PlayStation Move motion control to quickly target a player and pass the ball to them.

5:49 — Kobe Bryant walks out to play the game. He wastes no time in referring to the PlayStation Move as “the remote,” and then as “the thing.” Branding!

5:55 — We’re watching a demo of Medieval Moves: Deadmund’s Quest, a Move game in which you play as a skeleton who uses a sword and shield to play through a cute, haunted castle. Realistic sword-and-shield gameplay. Arrow-shooting, puzzles, etc. Looks pretty fun. Playable in Sony booth.

5:58 — Infamous 2 demo. This is a game that is coming out Tuesday, so it’s not like there’s anything major we don’t know about it yet. I personally am really looking forward to leaving Los Angeles and playing this.

6:00 — Oh, here’s the new bit of information then: Sony won’t be adding the much-touted user-generated levels to Infamous 2 until this fall. It is also adding Move support to LittleBigPlanet 2, as in you’ll be able to create levels that are played with Move. The next game comes from the Warhawk team — a run-and-gun third-person shooter (!) called Starhawk.

6:05 — CCP, makers of Eve Online, doing Dust 514, a game exclusive to PlayStation 3 that will connect to the Eve Online PC MMO game. Will support the Move and “extend the experience to NGP,” they say.

6:07 — Dust 514 is — I know you will never believe this — a shooter.

6:10 — Ken Levine of Irrational Games walks onstage to talk about BioShock Infinite. Ken said he expressed some “skepticism” about PlayStation Move and motion control in a recent interview. But Sony, he said, called him up and said that they wanted to “make him a believer” in motion control. Levine said Irrational didn’t do waggle. Sony responded by saying they want to “remove the barrier to entry” and get more casual players to play BioShock Infinite who don’t like to use a usual controller.

6:13 — We’re going to have PlayStation Move in BioShock Infinite, he says. He’s not going to talk specifically about that. But he is going to talk about how they’re making a game in the BioShock universe for the NGP! No, wait, he’s not, but he did say they were making one, and then left the stage. Wow. BioShock on NGP.

6:15 — The PS3 version of Infinite will include a free copy of the first BioShock on the same Blu-ray, Jack Tretton says. They’ll also do exclusive content for Saints Row 2. Paramount will be releasing a PlayStation Move-compatible Star Trek game, he says, as well as a PlayStation Move accessory in the shape of a Star Trek phaser. They’ll also be doing a downloadable prequel of sorts for the game, also Move-compatible. Coming in 2012.

6:17 — Three exclusive offers from Electronic Arts on PlayStation 3. SSX will have a “death-defying race down Japan’s iconic Mount Fuji” only on PS3. Need for Speed: The Run will feature a special Blu-ray disc with seven additional cars. Battlefield 3 will be bigger on PS3 too — EA is using the extra storage capacity of Blu-ray to add Battlefield 1943 on the disc. Sony’s all about getting publishers to put exclusive freebies on the PS3.

6:18 — Kazuo Hirai takes the stage to discuss the NGP. Here we go.

6:21 — Looks like Hirai will be talking about “networked entertainment” for portable devices. How do we deliver a PlayStation-level experience to a wider audience, he asks. Answer is PlayStation Suite. Android smartphones and tablets. More information on this in the “very near future.” It’s “only a matter of time,” Hirai says, until consumers who “get a taste” of PlayStation with Suite will buy a PlayStation 3.

6:23 — OK, now he’s talking about the NGP. Running down the feature set.

6:26 — AT&T will be the exclusive 3G data provider for Vita, Hirai says. First actual boos of the conference. Of E3. Of any E3, possibly.

6:27 — Two different social network apps for Vita are called “Party” and “Near.” These are about your friends lists, what you’re doing online, etc. More info coming soon.

6:30 — They’re showing a demo of Uncharted: Golden Abyss. You can read our hands-on impressions of the game for more info.

6:32 — Just in case you guys don’t want touch controls cluttering up your Uncharted experience, you don’t ever have to use them. Just a PSA from your friendly local liveblogger.

6:35 — Ruin is an action-RPG for the Vita. They’re showing how the combat works. It’s a standard top-down, loot-oriented ARPG.

6:38 — I am going to blow your minds. You can save your game on the Vita via “cloud saving” and then pick it up again on the PlayStation 3. This is like Transfarring [sic], and yet somehow better because you can do it over the internet. And on the Vita, which is something that Kojima was only dreaming about doing some time in the future. And yet … how could anything be better than Transfarring [sic]?

6:39 — Mod Nation Racers announced for Vita. You can draw on the touch panel and make a course just by dragging your finger around, then play it.

6:41 — I actually tried Mod Nation at Sony’s pre-E3 preview event. Impressions were embargoed until right now. Here are my impressions: The track editor didn’t work very well. When I dragged my finger around to make the track, it wasn’t very responsive at all. It was clearly very early in the development cycle. Perhaps the game will shape up a little better when it is released — it needs to be a lot more responsive to be fun to create.

6:42 — An extensive video of LittleBigPlanet on Vita.

6:48 — Capcom will now show us Street Fighter x Tekken on Vita, apparently. Yoshinori Ono from Capcom is here to talk about it. This is the first time I’ve actually heard somebody speaking Japanese this entire E3.

6:49 — Cole from Infamous will join the Street Fighter vs. Tekken party on Vita. We’re going to check out what he’s like in the game. You know, with his electricity powers, he actually fits in well. Who would win, Cole vs. Blanka?

6:54 — Oh hey, Sony dropped a press release 24 minutes ago (!) with the Vita’s price in it. $250 for no 3G, $300 for 3G. A bit lower than I predicted. I wonder how many people will go low-end, and what the data plans will cost.

6:57 — Jack Tretton is back onstage. Surprise announcement, maybe? They’re showing a sizzle reel of stuff we’ve already seen … huh. The conference is over, but the whole venue just seamlessly segued into a performance by Mix Master Mike. The arcade is open, and people are filtering down into the stage area to play the hands-on games. Sony said that “virtually everything” will be playable, so here’s hoping that means all the good stuff! Signing off for now.